Daiwa Securities research report notes that since the brokerage initiated coverage in August this year, its AI Token price index has fallen about 25% cumulatively, with OpenAI's and Anthropic's multi-region average blended list prices cut by roughly 31% and 47%, respectively. Daiwa attributes the declines mainly to the spread of low-cost models and improved inference efficiency, which will redistribute value across the AI technology stack and slow model labs' ARR growth in the near term. The report cautions that lower prices may stimulate call volumes, but model vendors must achieve extremely large volume growth to offset the shortfall in unit prices, and the recent wave of price cuts will absorb a considerable portion of near-term volume growth benefits. Daiwa notes that US AI suppliers are rapidly narrowing the pricing advantage Chinese vendors built up in the past through steep price cuts, while continuously raising the bar on model capabilities; Chinese large models remain somewhat competitive on average price but no longer hold a firm, absolute high ground on "cost-performance." At this stage, the brokerage prefers players with contract protection and IaaS exposure, while favoring applications and distribution channels over the long run. Its stock picks, in order, are Alibaba, Tencent, Kingsoft Cloud, Zhipu and Minimax, all rated Buy.